How U-Haul Cheated me out of my Lunch Money

 

Monday morning I was up before the sun made her royal entrance. That doesn’t happen often and I got to see her fingers of light as she poked them through the pine trees and touched a rabbit sleeping underneath. A series of rabbits has been giving birth in the same spot for over a decade, ever since I started having the landscaper use imported Western Pine needles there instead of regular mulch. They have good taste. That stuff costs double what common mulch costs and apparently it’s easy to burl down into to make a place safe from predators. Except for when Levi was alive. He’d barked his, “I see-eee you!” and they’d pretend to be made out of cement. They aren’t stupid, they knew he couldn’t escape his fence. If Levi had been a human boy he would have been riding the short bus because he never gave up on getting those rabbits to run.

I was up early to run errands and go to U-Haul to get some more packing boxes and what a crap-ass experience that turned out to be but not as crappy as a man who was working there was having. He installs trailer hitches and was dealing with a irate customer who was standing nearby yelling that she was on Yelp writing a bad review. He looks at me and starts in telling me that she showed up for her 9:00 appointment at 9:30 with a different year and model car than the one she told him she was bringing in and of course the hitch they ordered didn’t fit. She's calling him stupid and incompetent for not being able to make the one ordered work and he’s telling me, “It’s up the customer to know what kind of car they have. “You open the driver's door and read the tag! How hard is that?” he asked me but was clearing saying it for her benefit. They are both bickering and waiting for a return phone call to get an okay from the head U-Haul office to overnight him another hitch that will fit the car she brought in. In the meantime all the people who usually work the counter are missing in action and he’s having a second meltdown because he was all alone to man a counter that isn’t his responsibility.

Another customer walks in and takes one look at the situation, turns around and leaves which is what I should have done. But I really wanted those boxes. They were both getting themselves more and more worked up when I finally spoke, “This really is not worth either one of you having a stroke or heart attack over. Can you both just take a deep breath and try to calm down a little?” I’m lucky I don’t live in an open carry state because at that request I’m betting I would have had two hand guns pointed at me instead of each other. Oh, goody, I thought as they both gave me a long, blank stare, at least they’re agreeing on one thing. Without a word, she walks outside and lights a cigarette while he starts silently gathering up the boxes on my list.

Finally, a counter worker shows up, writes up my order and loads the boxes in my car…all in a pissy hurry while she and her co-worker are squabbling over responsibilities, the angry customer is still smoking on the other side of a plate glass window. I'm worried the metal edges on the wardrobe boxes are going to damage my backseat, so I'm getting annoyed that the clerk is taking her stress out on my car. It wasn’t until I was going over the receipt at the Guy Land Cafeteria that I noticed she charged me for three wardrobe boxes when I only got two. Those suckers cost $10.95. I thought about going back for my money. But the boxes totally blocked my back window view and to go back would have required a few lane changes where going home required none. The way my luck with U-Haul was going, I’d probably get in an accident on the way back causing bodies and cars to get wrecked and I didn’t have time for that. Decision time.

I finally decided that $10.95 doesn’t stand between me and starvation but if it ever comes down to that, I’ll be the homeless old woman who is cursing U-Haul as kind strangers drop coins in the cup at my feet. I never forget a debt and T.C. if you’re out there and find my blog, you still owe me $20 from the morning you borrowed it from me after what the kids these days are calling a “hook up.” I could re-frame that whole experience and say I once paid a gigolo $20 for sex. Does that sound any better? No? I didn't think so.

By the time I got to the Guy Land Cafeteria, in case you're wondering, all the old men morning coffee clutches were long gone and the working class men were filling up the place for lunch. But the gods of good-things-after-a-bad-morning gifted me with a whole table full of college guys on their way to school. And they sat at a table four foot across the aisle, perfect for eavesdropping. They talked about the classes they were taking and wondering who'd be living in their dorm and what the food on campus was like. You know, the same sorts of things I'm thinking about as my move gets closer. ©

Freaking Out!

I suppose freaking out is too strong a statement. Maybe wimping out or having a meltdown is closer to the fact? For some odd reason (or many reasons) tears have been close to the surface the past few weeks. One of those reasons is the on-going saga of my getting ready for my move to a continuum care campus---which in turn has caused me: 1) to depend on ambient too much to get some sleep, and 2) to depend of comfort foods to be my new best friend. Keeping the transition saga company on the ‘Things to Worry About' chart is stuff beyond my control---the pandemic, some issues my brother's family are going through, the housing market and worrying that the seller’s market will burst just as my house goes on the market, depending on hired help to get my house ready to list. Wouldn’t you think with so many situations I can't do anything about that I’d focus more on what I can control? Like my diet? My eating is so out of control it would take a baseball bat alongside the head to knock me back into the healthy eating zone. I'm still buying salads and fruits as well as the cookies, ice cream and carbs. I didn’t stop eating what I’m supposed to be eating, I just added my drug of choice to the mix. Sugar. Lots of sugar. I’ve been here before. The only thing that pulls me back from the Sugar Abyss is writing down every single morsel that passes my lips. I guess that's called 'accountability' and apparently I'm not mad enough about myself destructive behavior to go there yet.

You would not believe what I just went thought to get the correct spelling of ‘abyss.’ It involved a google search, my Franklin Word Master and a lot of yelling at Alexa because apparently in my dyslexic brain ‘obelisk’ and ‘abyss’ are pronounced the same. (When I check the spelling of a word, I always check its definition which is how I find all my brain farts in the Wonderful World of Writing.) I even tried to move past my obsession with that word by using the phrase Sugar Brink or Sugar Ledge instead of Sugar Abyss but I can be a stubborn creature when I argue with Alexa. And even that made tears roll down my cheek, wondering if my new neighbors be able to hear me yelling at my virtual assistant. Given all the fights we have over words on a daily basis why do I dream about getting another Alexa that isn’t tied to my Kindle? Some mysteries cannot be solved by applying logic.

Anyway, where was I with my ‘freaking out’ post? Stress. Yes, I’m stressed out and even though Levi my Might Schnauzer died two months ago, I’ve cried over him more these past two weeks than I did right after he passed away. I haven't been this "weepy" in years. My lawn treatment guy left a dog bone in a plastic bag with his invoice hanging on the door. Cue the crying. My cell phone calendar reminded me to give Levi his flea and heart worm medications. Cue the tears. And do you know how many cute dog videos pop up on my Facebook feed? They’ve always been there so why did they start effecting me now, two months after Levi’s passing? Probably for the same reason songs on Prime County have become crying cues again. I need more sleep, less sugar and a couple of huge hugs. Gosh, it's been well over a year since another human and I have touched. Damn pandemic! Makes me want to fake a choking event just to get someone to do the Heimlich Maneuver.

I got invited out to lunch by two of my Gathering Girls pals and found out the group, as we knew it, has reached its demise. We had a good run for nearly four years---meeting twice a month for lunch, but it looks like we’re not going to survive the damage the pandemic did to our good times. Last summer we were meeting in a park since the restaurants were all closed down and I was fully expecting to start that up again once we get past the unseasonably cold weather we’ve been having. But these two women told me they and a third member of the group don't want to meet in the park anymore because the picnic tables are too uncomfortable. Another member has COPD compromised lungs and even though she’s fully vaccinated she doesn’t want to go to restaurants but would do the park and sixth member of our group is afraid to get vaccinated which makes a few of the other ladies in the group nervous to be around her. Restaurants here are still not operating at full capacity and, for me, it isn't fun to linger over lunch when people are waiting to be seated. The handwriting is on the wall, there is no way to make everyone happy. 

I was the person who always sent out the bi-monthly emails to keep us meeting every 1^st and 3^rd Mondays. Even during this past winter when no places were open I still sent out the emails to keep us all touching bases. But at lunch I passed the job of coordinating future lunches and RSVPs on to one of my lunch companions who also had a bone to pick about meeting at a centrally located restaurant we often went to before the pandemic put us in the park. It seems that three in the group want to do spur-of-the-moment lunches instead of on fixed dates and they want to bounce around to different places. We've done a little of that bouncing around, especially in the early years, even tried rotating who picked the restaurants but neither worked as well for getting full attendance like going to our 'default place' did. Sitting at lunch this week, the negativity took me by surprised and I felt chastised which---real or made-up in my sleep deprived head---made me sad, like I hadn't been sensitive enough to the winds of discontinue. And it makes me a little mad that I had to come home and remove a summer's worth of 1st and 3rd Monday luncheons off my day planner. After doing that, I deleted Levi's medication reminders off my phone app calendar. Change is hard but I plan to take Socrates' advice to heart. ©

I'm Sick of Everything!

I’m so sick of life right now! I mean it! I’ve reached my limit of tolerance. My give-a-damn is broken in half. Yup, I’m sick of everything to do with anything especially the cold and snow that's finding its way to parts of the country where it doesn't belong rubbing our noses in the fact that it's still winter. If we didn’t have a world pandemic still taking people out like balls rolling near the gutters at bowling alleys take out the seven and ten pins I’d say I need a vacation. A nice trip to any place, even to the local sculpture park would brighten my mood. When are the butterflies coming to their tropical conservatory? March? April? Oh, ya, they’re be there for both months but will it be safe for humans to attend the normally shoulder-to-shoulder exhibit? Will school kids be bused in one load after another, day after day? I have gone most years, often meeting my youngest niece there with her grandkids. After not seeing her for a whole year, I’ll bet she wouldn’t even recognize me with my pandemic hair style. Make that two years! The pandemic closed the butterflies down last year, and I'm sorry World but emails, text messages, phone calls and Facebook postings aren't slicing and dicing my loneliness enough to make a tablespoon of cure.

I suppose the state of my mind was inevitable after weeks and months of being invested in things I have no control over like the pandemic, the state of our political climate and now with Republican Senator Ted F'ing Cruz making his "excuses tour" on the media for flying to Cancun while the people of his state were/still are suffering during a nearly state-wide power outrage due to a harsh weather event. In the meantime, Democrats and private citizen Beto O'Rourke and Senator A.O. Cortez stepped up to do what Cruz shoulda'/coulda' have done---care about people, help them! Beta organized a massive phone bank to check on seniors and AOC raised 2 million dollars to fly food and water to Texas food banks.

Is it possible for an entire nation to have a collective mental health breakdown? If so, call me the Indian scout who goes out to test the route the tribe behind is about to travel. You all, turn around, find a kitten to pet and calm down! Meditate. That's what scouts did, they'd find trouble up ahead and warn the tribe to change course. Yes, I’m of that generation who grew up watching Western movies, double features on Saturday afternoons which begs the question: What were our mothers doing with their time when we sat in the movie theaters for four hours? I don’t remember ever going to the grocery store with my mom as a kid. Did mothers in the 40s do their shopping after dropping us off to see the latest shoot-em-up or Lone Ranger film? It was the only day my mom had access to the family car. Did they also have ‘private time’ with our dads? Yuck! Parents shouldn’t have sex! Gouge that image out of my head! My dad was perfect, my mom had her faults but I don’t want to think about them playing kissy-face even though I know they did it at least three times. (They miscarried a baby in between me and my brother.)

I’ve often wondered how much different my life would have been if I’d had a second sibling, a brother closer to my own age. Would we have shared friends, done more things together than my older brother and I did? As kids we did our share of ice skating, sledding, playing board games and hanging out in the woods behind our cottage growing up but by the time he was a teenager with a large posse of friends we grew apart. Then he got married right out of high school, moved a good distance away and they spent the next few years popping three babies into the world while I finished up high school and started college. I don’t think my brother understood me at all during the entire 1960s when I dated a lot but didn’t get married. I’m pretty sure he thought I was freakish for not having the same goals that most of the girls he graduated with did---the big wedding, babies and a nice house. He even told me once that I was too picky. It’s not that I didn’t want those things and a white picket fence I just had other goals as well.

Boy, has this post gotten derailed from the original topic I started writing about. Oh, well, that’s probably a good thing because my little I’m-sick-of-life temper tantrum wasn’t getting me anywhere…and they never did. As a kid my mom had little sympathy for my tears and she discouraged my dad from showing empathy when I cried. And clearly empathy was his first reaction to any sign of discomfort anyone around Dad was experiencing. Hardened by life, I never saw her cry. Around her ninth birthday her own mother had died and my mom got separated from her siblings to earn her keep working in a boarding house. She was a product of her times---a child during the last world pandemic, a young woman living on her own during the Great Depression, a mother during WWII and, boy, did she come out the other side of all that societal stress a strong woman.

Looking back, people all tend to put on rose colored glasses and think past generations had it easier than we do in real time. We romanticize. We generalize. We gloss over. And some day in the far future people will look back at 2020/21 and do the same thing. They will romanticize our pandemic driven stay-at home orders and generalize it to the point they'll only remember the closeness many families were able to achieve during this time---the TicTok videos, the zoom choirs---like the fun stuff they portrayed in all the USO movies of WWII. Pain always lessens with the passing of time. People in the future will gloss over the political unrest, too, that we are living through and only remember those among us who get through it stronger and more principled than before---the political heroes yet to rise to the top. Until then I’m taking two aspirin and living in a house of silence for a week which has always proven to be cure for what ails me right now. Sensory overload. My media block out will be akin to my mom sending me to my room until I quit feeling sorry for myself. ©

The snow now piled at the top of my driveway

Snow along the sidewalk to my front door. I just shoveled what I could reach off my shrub.

The path I shoveled on my deck for the dog to get to his pen.

Snow in the dog's pen. That fence if 3 foot tall.

 

And last but not least my front mailbox and the path I shoveled to its back side. All photos taken to remind of what I'm leaving behind if I start missing this house next winter.

Life in the Stress Lane

Have you ever felt like you’re collecting stress, one petty pebble at a time? A pile of pebbles adds up and I’m not sure how much more I can take. For example, my cell phone wouldn’t turn on after charging. We’ve lived decades without one so it shouldn’t be a big deal. Solution: take it to the cell phone repair place and throw money at the problem. Okay, I did that. In the meantime the dog groomer told me that Levi has a golf ball sized tumor on the inside of his back leg that wasn’t there six weeks ago when he was last bathed and beautified. Went right home, called the vet and was told to call on my cell from the parking lot when I arrive for the appointment. Oh, great! First World problem meet the pandemic rules of engagement.

Next pebble: I left the post office after dropping a letter in their outside box and while I waited for the pickup truck in front of me to turn onto the street, I could see an accident about to happen. And it did. The truck had those humongous tires that puts the driver up high in the air and just as he was pulling out he hit a woman on a bike who shot out in front of him. She was coming down the sidewalk and she never slowed down or stopped at the corner or even tried to make eye contact with the driver before pedaling her way into the accident. Anyone who’s been in one of those jacked-up pickup trucks knows there’s quite a blind spot in front. I blame them both and while she didn’t get hurt as badly as the back of her bike, it was stressful to watch. Waiting for the aftermath to unfold made me late for an appointment with my bank’s investment broker and I had to reschedule. Ya I know, ho-hum more First World problems.

Pebble number four: I have an issue going on with my arm and I’ve had to wait four weeks to get into see my bone doctor. September 8th can't come fast enough. I’ve mentioned before that I had elbow surgery two decades ago and a year ago it was giving me a lot of pain. When the doctor x-rayed it he found out that the screws have backed out and one is floating around and the end of a one bone is not attached to anything. Not wanting to go through more surgery he told me what not to do to keep the pain at bay. Not lifting anything above my waist and keeping my elbow tucked in close to my side when I do pick anything up has worked well until all of sudden my arm started giving me needles-and-pins feelings whenever I type and my arm often feels like dead weight that alternates with feeling like I’ve got a blood pressure monitor squeezing me. I have a high tolerance for pain but the constant weirdness is driving me nuts. I’m not sure if I’d label this a First World problem but I just wish it could go away with a bonk on the head from a good fairy's magic wand. 

Then there’s the pandemic that adds surprises (and not in a good way) to our lives like going to the dollar store and running into a cashier who was wearing her mask on her chin. We have a mandatory mask law in place in our state and this is an anti-maskers protest move that keeps them from getting fired or fined. All it did for me is tense me up wondering if someone in line would challenge her selfishness for not covering her nose and mouth. A little stress pebble from a woman with rocks instead of brains in her head. I got the last laugh, though, because the receipt gives a link to rate your visit and for the first time ever, I went online and filled out one of those forms.

More pebbles of stress are coming at me from the political election crap/conventions heating up. I just want it all to go away as easily as drinking a tall glass of icy, cold water could make a mirage go way if one were crossing the Jordan Desert with a camera crew remaking Lawrence of Arabia. Whoa! Where did that thought come from...but aren’t movies great? We get the danger, the romance and the allure of far-away places without breaking a sweat. Like my fascination with being a CIA agent/spy which is only attractive as a career choice if I could take a stunt double with me while I save the world. Is that too much to ask? I’m digressing again but know this: if I ever get dementia I'm going to have fun living inside my head.

Back to pebbles of stress, did I mention wasps are busy as I type building a nest under the shingles of my house and that my yard is creeping me out? Everywhere I look poison ivy is growing. Why? I don’t need more jobs on my list of things to do. I feel like I’m juggling too many balls in the air and they’re all about to fall because I’ve lost interest in everything except when can I buy ingredients to make s’mores? And trust me, I'm reaching far back into my past to be lusting after those as comfort food. What next will I crave? Gerber's Sweet Potatoes and Peas? That's what I get, I suppose, for banning ice cream, cake and cookies from the house. 

The bottom line? Where do I go to find some gratitude that my First World problems are just pebbles compared to the boulders that others in Third World countries face? Where do I go to get an attitude adjustment? My problems are petty but the more stress pebbles that get thrown into my metaphorical pond the more I wonder if I’ll need a surfboard to navigate the ripples as they seemingly grow higher and higher. ©

Here Comes Summer

I can’t believe its July already. I’d like to say I’m happy, healthy and full of bright ideas and laugh-out-loud stories to tell. But I’m sitting here like a toad on a log hoping a snail will magically appear in my mouth because I’m too lazy to go forage for my dinner. I don’t have far to go. My well stocked refrigerator is only eight feet away and if I was really ambitious I could grab my car keys, be to my car in sixteen steps and take off to find a place to pick up dinner. But I’m still not embracing the pandemic-born curbside pickup concept or going to restaurants that are operated with social distancing inside. However, after three-and-a-half months of my own boring cutlery skills---or lack thereof---I’m almost desperate enough to try some oven baked chicken with peas dog chews followed by some pumpkin and apple dog fruitables for dessert.

At least the grocery store has started selling mixed boxes of fruit again so I can have an assortment of berries on my morning cereal or start making protein drinks again. I’ve missed raspberries and black berries. My life that revolves around the grocery store supply chains is returning to near normal again. Still no disinfecting wipes, barista Sweet Foam or liquid hand soap but at least I’m not going to die from missing my coffee additive. It just feels that way. The wipes are an easy work around but it took me a while to come up with my secret solution for an alternate for liquid hand soap. Dawn dish soap in my hand pumps. If you can wash wild life in the stuff to get oil spills off the poor critters it must be safe for humans and they say to kill the covid-19 virus you don’t need anti-bacterial soap, you only need something to break up the oils in the virus. By the way, don’t spread my secret solution around! If it gets scarce I’m blaming you guys. 

I spent the entire mandatory stay-at-home orders living off comfort foods, baking too much and moving too little, gaining too many pounds. Last week I gave up sugar. Hard because I would shoot liquid sugar up my veins when I'm stressed out, if I could. This week I’m (trying to) add walks to my routine. One day---hopefully soon---I’ll get totally disgusted with myself and then I’ll be ready to start a warp-speed approach to dieting which for me, involves two liquid meal replacement meals a day and one sensible real food meal. First I have to finish kicking myself in the head for allowing pandemic induced stress and food insecurities to rule my life. I hate that my pantry is filled to the brim with panic buying. I’ve been here before at the Self-Loathing Station waiting to step off the platform. I'll get there but it's hard.

The fact that my state is (carefully) easing back into something short of normal commerce is helping me get my bad habits under control. Goodwill is accepting donations again with changes when you pull up to their door---you sort your own stuff into big boxes sitting outside and only one person is allowed under their canopy at a time. I was able to get to recycling today and was not surprised that I had to wait in line to pull into one of their twelve parking places in front of the roll-off recycling bins even though they've been open for a few weeks. The bottle return across the street is open, too, with every other machine blocked off and there were at least twenty people waiting in line with overflowing shopping carts full of bottles and cans. There was a one cart per person rule but I don’t drink much pop so I didn’t need that line. (I have maybe 30 mini sized cans since January and they can wait until a kid comes along doing a can drive to fund a school event.) Had the hazardous waste station been open, though, I would have gladly waited in that line. I go through a lot of printer ink cartridges while printing e-Bay labels, packing slips and listing forms and the longer they hang around the house the more I’m tempted to throw them in the trash. But I don't. We’ve abused Mother Nature enough and she is fighting back. Seriously, she just brought a 4,000-mile-long dust storm from the Sahara Desert to America! Haven’t we had enough drama for one year? 

I hadn’t been to the bank since early March... I’m not fond of using drive-up windows but their lobby still isn't open and I was getting desperate. I don’t like those the pneumatic tubes that sends your business flying overhead then drops the tubes in the teller area. People think that technology a fairly recent invention (in old-people speak 'recent' is 30-35 years) but the first patent for a system for delivering items by air pressure and vacuum was issued in 1854 and they’ve been in use ever since. They were used extensively at the stock exchange and the post office even before the 1900s. The turn-of-the-century brought them into large department stores and by mid-century they were in big-time use in buildings through out Washington D.C. I don’t like using them because I can’t reach them without unfastening my seat belt and opening the car door which bangs against the stupid cement posts, if I'm not careful.

I asked the teller when they expect the lobby to be open again and she said as soon as all the branches have their Plexiglas in place. “I’ll bet they'll be with us for a long time” I replied and she wrinkled up her nose and said, “Waste of money. The virus is totally over-blown.” That night I decided that when I run errands I’m going to make notations on my day planner of the times I was at the places I go. Why? Contact tracing. The local news had just listed the names of five area restaurants and said if anyone was at them between such-and-such of time on such-and-such day they need to call the health department and self-quarantine because they’d been exposed to Covid-19. One place alone was responsible for over two dozen people getting sick. And idiots like the bank teller who think the virus is a media hoax are going to keep spreading it. Ready or not, here comes summer in Pandemic Land. ©